Is this even a thing, landscaping edition

March 31, 2016 4:35 PM

Having purchased a house on a sizable plot of land (0.6 acres), we find ourselves in a pickle -- we'd like to fix up the yard, currently best described as "woefully neglected", but we'd like to do the work ourselves. The problem being, while we have a good idea of what we want, we don't know how to do it. We want some sort of mentor, somebody to review ideas, tell us broadly how to go about doing the work, give us feedback after we're done, and so forth.

Does this person/job function exist? Is this within the purview of a landscape architect? Is this something a traditional landscaper would be comfortable with? Should we just accept that we're on our own, check out the Time Life series from the local library, and get to digging?

Special snowflake factors: we live in the PNW, but are looking to redo the lawn in a xeriscaped sort of fashion -- minimal maintenance, minimal additional watering, etc. We've also got a couple of mature Doug firs that drop tons of needles, and we need a solution that deals with that without requiring us to scoop them up or leafblow them away. Et cetera and et cetera...

posted by genehack to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Best answer: Permaculture designers do this kind of thing -- especially the minimal maintenance and watering part. There are a lot of places that teach permaculture design in Oregon, so it should be fairly easy to track down someone who works with residential landscaping.
posted by ananci at 4:48 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Call up your local Master Gardeners - usually through the Ag Extension at your local state college. You could also look for Permaculturists or student horticulturists, or a local nursery (not a big box). You could also take Master Gardener/Permaculture courses yourself - so much fun!
posted by jrobin276 at 4:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: +1 master gardeners.

King County, WA, has a gardening/landscaping website that may be of value to you. There are landscaping plans, focused on native plants, for different site conditions:
https://green2.kingcounty.gov/gonative/index.aspx

Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest (by Russell Link) may also be useful to you. It may help you to form a plan for what to do under the douglas firs. There are plenty of native plants that thrive near them, they can provide a lovely background for non-native specimens.
posted by stowaway at 5:15 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I have a friend who does this in the Portland area (which isn't so far away I think) check your memail.
posted by vespabelle at 6:05 PM on March 31, 2016

Best answer: In terms of reviewing ideas, I've had good luck with some (not all) local nurseries and landscaping centres. You go to the places where they actually sell plants, and find some knowledgeable older person who is not currently busy with customers, and get to chatting with them about your plans. They will set you right if you are planning anything really unrealistic, and might have ideas you haven't thought of. My experience has not been that they generally put the hard sell on you about things their own centre sells. People in those jobs usually really care about plants and landscaping and they want you to succeed, even if it means you buy things elsewhere.
posted by lollusc at 7:12 PM on March 31, 2016

Best answer: This is totally a thing! I got my parents a landscape consult as a gift once. I just went to my area's fanciest schmanciest nursery, wherever you'd go to get unusual and\or native plants, and a staff person there was happy to do an on site consult for a by-the-hour fee.
posted by Ausamor at 7:13 PM on March 31, 2016

Best answer: I have done something similar by having several contractors out to give me quotes and discuss my options (with a LOT of questions!), and using that input to make plans and do research on which tasks I can handle and which require specialist skills or equipment.

Many contractors are happy t talk in that mode: "sweat equity" is usually easiest on low-skill portions of a job, and they can do best leveraging their specialities in the trickier parts of the work.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:24 AM on April 1, 2016

Best answer: I put in a good hundred hour trying to re -do my own lawn before I called A Guy. His crew of four did it in a day, and since then he has handled questions from us about it -- and we happily referred others to him.

Our construction contractor did the same, and we ended up re-doing like half of our ground floor last Spring. It really is part of the job. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 3:30 AM on April 1, 2016